


Despair's Unhallowed Bed

by highflyerwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highflyerwings/pseuds/highflyerwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the prompt: Lucifer wins the Final Battle, and the only thing left of Michael are the traces of his Grace still left inside Adam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despair's Unhallowed Bed

**Author's Note:**

> Title is stolen from "To Marie Louise (Shew)" by Edgar Allen Poe.

Each angel’s grace is different when it dies.   
  
Some go out with a bang.  Exploding in a flurry of light, and sound.    
  
Some fade out of extinction slowly... _quietly_...all soft and blurred edges.   
  
Then some are quickly snuffed out, like the flame of a candle.  Flickering for only a moment before disappearing altogether in a puff of white smoke.  
  
And some of them...some of them fight.  Fight to hold on, to survive, to leave something behind...   
  
Michael was one of the fighters.   
  
Lucifer felt the swell of his brother’s grace as it surged and then quickly retreated back on itself.  The ebb and flow of it, back and forth against his own as it slowly faded into nothingness.  It clung to what was left of Lucifer’s grace, clutching at it desperately, like the grasping arms of a drowning man.   
  
All that had ever been bright and good in Lucifer’s life was being smothered in a darkness he had no control over.   
  
He hadn’t wanted this.  Not  _this_.  Not  _ever_.  The last thing in the  _world_  he’d wanted was to lose his big brother.  For  _eons_ , the only thing that kept Lucifer clawing his way out of his cage was Michael.  Michael’s light, and Michael’s voice.  The strong edges of him, always there--for  _millennia_ \--wrapping himself around Lucifer, protecting him... _keeping_  him.  He was Michael’s and Michael was his.   
  
 _Falling didn’t change that._    
  
Lucifer watched his brother’s grace tear itself apart in his hands.  And in that moment he felt colder and more alone than he had in those first few moments he was cast out of Heaven--exiled to the vast outskirts of space and time, with naught but his thoughts and the stars to keep him company.  He watched in horror as Michael’s grace slowly dwindled down into faint sparks of light, and ribbons of color that swirled through the vessel that held it.   
  
 _The boy_.   
  
This boy, this... _thing_  who should live while Lucifer’s brother died.   
  
Lucifer's anger flared and he gripped the boy tighter, holding on for as long as he could while he waited for Michael to disappear.  Waited for...what... _what was to happen when Michael was gone?..._  
  
But before the last spark faded--before Lucifer could see his brother's light fade from his world forever--the boy in his arms gasped, returning to his own consciousness, and gazing up at Lucifer with wide and terrified eyes.   
  
Lucifer gasped in return, and in his shock his grasp loosened marginally.  He looked into the boy’s eyes, and still Michael was there.   _He's still there_.  The faint glimmer of a far-off star, stuck inside the eyes of a child.   
  
“Michael?” Lucifer murmured.   
  
The boy relaxed against him and shook his head slightly.  "No, it's me.  It's Adam," he said breathlessly.  "But...I can still feel him.  Inside me.  I think...I think he's still here."  Then he stopped, and his brow furrowed, and he watched Lucifer for a moment longer, regarding him carefully...questioningly.   
  
“Sam?” he asked softly.   
  
The name.  That name.  It...snapped something inside Lucifer--the way it was whispered, soft and murmured, tumbling from the mouth of his vessel's little brother.  A wave of anger hotter than any hellfire back in the pit washed over him, and with every fiber of the tattered grace left inside of him Lucifer wanted nothing more than to break the boy in his arms.  To snap him in half, and smear his remains across the farthest reaches of the universe.  But when he saw the remnants of Michael’s grace suddenly flare inside the boy’s eyes, he stopped.   
  
 _No_.   
  
His grip instantly eased, and he held the boy softly, cradling him in the strong circle of Sam’s arms.  He reached up and held the side of Adam's face, cradling the soft curve of his cheek as gently and reverently as the rest of him in the palm of Sam's hand.  The feather-soft strands of the boy's hair brushed his fingertips lightly and Lucifer smiled.   
  
"It's okay," he murmured.  "I've got you." 


End file.
